22-letter words containing l, a, g, r
- cotton-wool generation — the children and teenagers of the early 21st century, viewed as having been overprotected while growing up
- course author language — (language) (CAL) The CAI language for the IBM 360.
- criminal investigation — an investigation by the police into a crime
- cut a long story short — to leave out details in a narration
- dadra and nagar haveli — a union territory of W India, on the Gulf of Cambay: until 1961 administratively part of Portuguese Damão. Capital: Silvassa. Pop: 220 451 (2001). Area: 489 sq km (191 sq miles)
- de broglie wave length — the postulate of wave mechanics that a particle of mass m moving at a velocity v will have the properties of a wave of wavelength h / mv (de Broglie wavelength) where h is Planck's constant.
- delaunay triangulation — (mathematics, graphics) (After B. Delaunay) For a set S of points in the Euclidean plane, the unique triangulation DT(S) of S such that no point in S is inside the circumcircle of any triangle in DT(S). DT(S) is the dual of the voronoi diagram of S.
- descriptive cataloging — the aspect of cataloging concerned with the bibliographic and physical description of a book, recording, or other work, accounting for such items as author or performer, title, edition, and imprint as opposed to subject content.
- devil's darning needle — dragonfly
- diachronic linguistics — historical linguistics.
- digital control system — (systems) (DCS) A digital computer used for real-time control of a dynamic system, usually in an industrial environment, possibly as part of a Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system. A DCS samples feedback from the system under control and modifies the control signals in an attempt to achieve some desired behaviour. Analysis of such digital-analogue feedback systems can involve mathematical methods such as difference equations, Laplace transforms, z transfer functions, state space models and state transition matrices.
- digital radio mondiale — (communications) (DRM) A form of monaural digital broadcast using carrier frequencies below 30 MHz. DRM uses MPEG-4 AAC Main Profile and SBR at data rates of 16-25 kbps.
- digital standard mumps — (DSM) DEC's version of MUMPS.
- digital versatile disc — (storage) (DVD, formerly "Digital Video Disc") An optical storage medium with improved capacity and bandwidth compared with the Compact Disc. DVD, like CD, was initally marketed for entertainment and later for computer users. [When was it first available?] A DVD can hold a full-length film with up to 133 minutes of high quality video, in MPEG-2 format, and audio. The first DVD drives for computers were read-only drives ("DVD-ROM"). These can store 4.7 GBytes - over seven times the storage capacity of CD-ROM. DVD-ROM drives read existing CD-ROMs and music CDs and are compatible with installed sound and video boards. Additionally, the DVD-ROM drive can read DVD films and modern computers can decode them in software in real-time. The DVD video standard was announced in November 1995. Matshusita did much of the early development but Philips made the first DVD player, which appeared in Japan in November 1996. In May 2004, Sony released the first dual-layer drive, which increased the disc capacity to 8.5 GB. Double-sided, dual-layer discs will eventually increase the capacity to 17 GB. Write-once DVD-R ("recordable") drives record a 3.9GB DVD-R disc that can be read on a DVD-ROM drive. Pioneer released the first DVD-R drive on 1997-09-29. By March 1997, Hitachi had released a rewritable DVD-RAM drive (by false analogy with random-access memory). DVD-RAM drives read and write to a 2.6 GB DVD-RAM disc, read and write-once to a 3.9GB DVD-R disc, and read a 4.7 GB or 8.5 GB DVD-ROM. Later, DVD-RAM discs could be read on DVD-R and DVD-ROM drives.
- digital video recorder — See DVR.
- dilation and curettage — a surgical method for the removal of diseased tissue or an early embryo from the lining of the uterus by means of scraping.
- directed acyclic graph — (DAG) A directed graph containing no cycles. This means that if there is a route from node A to node B then there is no way back.
- dishonorable discharge — the discharge of a person from military service for an offense more serious than one for which a bad-conduct discharge is given.
- draft-quality printing — low-quality, high-speed output in printed form from a printer linked to a word processor
- east greenland current — a cold ocean current of low salinity flowing south along the east coast of Greenland.
- electrical engineering — Electrical engineering is the designing, constructing, and maintenance of electrical devices.
- electroencephalographs — Plural form of electroencephalograph.
- electroencephalography — The measurement of electrical activity in different parts of the brain and the recording of such activity as a visual trace (on paper or on an oscilloscope screen).
- electromagnetic moment — a measure of the magnetic strength of a magnet or current-carrying coil, expressed as the torque produced when the magnet or coil is set with its axis perpendicular to unit magnetic flux density. It is measured in ampere metres squared
- electrophysiologically — In an electrophysiological way.
- engineering consultant — a consultant specializing in engineering
- english cocker spaniel — any of a breed of small spaniel, similar to and the progenitor of the cocker spaniel
- equal rights amendment — a proposed amendment to the US Constitution enshrining equality between the sexes
- evolutionary algorithm — (EA) An algorithm which incorporates aspects of natural selection or survival of the fittest. An evolutionary algorithm maintains a population of structures (usually randomly generated initially), that evolves according to rules of selection, recombination, mutation and survival, referred to as genetic operators. A shared "environment" determines the fitness or performance of each individual in the population. The fittest individuals are more likely to be selected for reproduction (retention or duplication), while recombination and mutation modify those individuals, yielding potentially superior ones. EAs are one kind of evolutionary computation and differ from genetic algorithms. A GA generates each individual from some encoded form known as a "chromosome" and it is these which are combined or mutated to breed new individuals. EAs are useful for optimisation when other techniques such as gradient descent or direct, analytical discovery are not possible. Combinatoric and real-valued function optimisation in which the optimisation surface or fitness landscape is "rugged", possessing many locally optimal solutions, are well suited for evolutionary algorithms.
- examining the entrails — The process of grovelling through a core dump or hex image in an attempt to discover the bug that brought a program or system down. The reference is to divination from the entrails of a sacrified animal. Compare runes, incantation, black art, desk check.
- fall prey to something — To fall prey to something bad means to be taken over or affected by it.
- financial underwriting — Financial underwriting is the process of assessing whether the proposed sum insured and product are reasonable when considering the possible financial loss to the client.
- fitzgerald contraction — the hypothesis that a moving body exhibits a contraction in the direction of motion when its velocity is close to the speed of light.
- flexible-rate mortgage — adjustable-rate mortgage.
- floating exchange rate — a system in which the value of a currency fluctuates against other currencies in accordance with market forces
- for a laugh/for laughs — If you do something for a laugh or for laughs, you do it as a joke or for fun.
- full english breakfast — morning meal of eggs, bacon, etc.
- functional programming — (programming) (FP) A program in a functional language consists of a set of (possibly recursive) function definitions and an expression whose value is output as the program's result. Functional languages are one kind of declarative language. They are mostly based on the typed lambda-calculus with constants. There are no side-effects to expression evaluation so an expression, e.g. a function applied to certain arguments, will always evaluate to the same value (if its evaluation terminates). Furthermore, an expression can always be replaced by its value without changing the overall result (referential transparency). The order of evaluation of subexpressions is determined by the language's evaluation strategy. In a strict (call-by-value) language this will specify that arguments are evaluated before applying a function whereas in a non-strict (call-by-name) language arguments are passed unevaluated. Programs written in a functional language are generally compact and elegant, but have tended, until recently, to run slowly and require a lot of memory. Examples of purely functional languages are Clean, FP, Haskell, Hope, Joy, LML, Miranda, and SML. Many other languages such as Lisp have a subset which is purely functional but also contain non-functional constructs. See also lazy evaluation, reduction.
- gallamine triethiodide — a neuromuscular blocking drug, C 30 H 60 I 3 N 3 O 3 , similar to curare, used as a skeletal muscle relaxant in conjunction with surgical anesthesia.
- galvanic skin response — a change in the electrical conductivity of the skin caused by an emotional reaction to a stimulus.
- gastrointestinal tract — organs of digestion
- general public licence — (spelling) It's spelled "General Public License". (In the UK, "licence" is a noun and "license" is a verb (like "advice"/"advise") but in the US both are spelled "license").
- general public license — (legal) (GPL, note US spelling) The licence applied to most software from the Free Software Foundation and the GNU project and other authors who choose to use it. The licences for most software are designed to prevent users from sharing or changing it. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee the freedom to share and change free software - to make sure the software is free for all its users. The GPL is designed to make sure that anyone can distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if they wish); that they receive source code or can get it if they want; that they can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs; and that they know they can do these things. The GPL forbids anyone to deny others these rights or to ask them to surrender the rights. These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for those who distribute copies of the software or modify it. See also General Public Virus.
- generalized coordinate — Usually, generalized coordinates. one of a minimum set of coordinates needed to specify the state or position of a given system.
- give something a whirl — to attempt or give a trial to something
- gloria in excelsis deo — the hymn beginning, in Latin, Gloria in Excelsis Deo, “Glory in the highest to God,” and in the English version, “Glory be to God on high.”.
- glossopharyngeal nerve — either of the ninth pair of cranial nerves, consisting of motor fibers that innervate the muscles of the pharynx, the soft palate, and the parotid glands, and of sensory fibers that conduct impulses to the brain from the pharynx, the middle ear, and the posterior third of the tongue.
- glucose tolerance test — a diagnostic procedure in which a measured amount of glucose is ingested and blood samples are taken periodically as a means of detecting diabetes mellitus.
- go for all the marbles — to take a great risk in the hope of a great gain
- gold-exchange standard — a monetary system in one country in which currency is maintained at a par with that of another country that is on the gold standard.